You might be surprised to find out that many of the storage units you come across at auction once belonged to other auction-hunters.
In some ways, the storage auction community can tend to be a bit self-feeding. When you buy a unit at auction, you have the opportunity to either remove the items or simply take over the lease on the unit.
As long as someone’s paying rent, the storage facility doesn’t care. For the buyer, though, this can be a bit of a pitfall. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with a unit and choose to pay for storage rather than dealing with its contents.
If your resale business falls on hard times, you might find your hard work up at the next lien sale.
There are a lot of benefits to renting storage space for the items you buy at an auction, but there are also a lot of drawbacks. It’s up to you to weigh the pros and cons and decide whether a storage facility is the best place to keep items you can’t sell right away.
Pros:
You don’t have merchandise taking up space in your house
You can run a resale business from a small space, like an apartment, without limiting what you can buy
It’s more convenient to rent a storage unit than clean it out right away
You can consolidate the contents of several units into a single unit for convenience
You can hold onto items for a long time until they become worth more; for example, you can store Christmas ornaments that you find throughout the summer and sell them in December
Cons:
It’s easy to get overwhelmed and end up with more stuff than you can reasonably resell
You have to factor in the cost of a storage unit into your business overhead
If your business goes slowly, you might lose the unit altogether
You’ll have to drive out to the facility and load up items to sell them
You can start to forget what you even have stored and lose out on sales opportunities
Ultimately, it all comes down to organization and control. As long as you keep your storage unit rent inside your budget and don’t let yourself get overwhelmed, storing things at a facility can be a smart idea.
It’s certainly better than letting your goods fill up your home with clutter. On the other hand, you don’t want to lull yourself into believing that you can afford to keep more stuff than you can reasonably ever sell.
Practice restraint, buy only what you can sell for a profit, and don’t let your excitement cloud your judgment.
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